Drawing In The Sand
by korel.c
Summary: Her pencils are his Keyblades, her paper his sand. This is how he draws; he only wishes she could immortalize it. Namixas


**Other Mediums: Drawing In The Sand**

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He is cursing, now, Oblivion and Oathkeeper flashing, bright and dark.

There is an open portal to Betwixt and Between, and Namine is standing just beyond it, peering out onto his efforts.

He is not betraying his Superior...not quite, because the Superior told them not to let Namine set foot onto any other world, and she is not, not really - she is still within Betwixt and Between, still half-a-step away from her own room. Still half-a-step away from the coloured-pencils and sketchbook that the Superior allows her; her knowledge of her art frequently missing in places, learning as she goes.

And he, he is learning as he goes, also.

Like her, his instincts come unbidden to his arms and shoulders and body, his legs twist smooth and flowing. He fights like Demyx's water, except more smoothly, and if Namine had had the time she would have drawn that too. He waits, like Xigbar; waiting for the perfect shot. Waits, and considers, like Zexion. Then attacks, flurry of blows, storm of fire swathing glass. Like Axel.

He moves steady, like Lexaeus. Serene on the outside, burning on the inside, like Saix. With utmost assurance of his vision, like Xemnas. Gracefully.

He seems to pause for a moment, throwing himself into the air to look upon the odd swirls and slices in the dunes beneath him. Twisting in the air, he lands outside of a large curve, and frowns.

Namine hates to see him frown. Her hand itches for a pencil, to draw his figure, gazing down at his handiwork. To keep this memory she has had, for she knows that if she is kept in her room again, without knowledge of time - Luxord's influence, mayhap - her own memories will fade further. Each memory of Kairi and...S-sora? is fleeting and translucent enough; her own, so much more fragile, so much more easily to be lost.

He is done with his pondering. He throws himself into the air again, one blade flashing out of his grip to thud into the sand. He lands without overbalancing on the hilt, looking down, sinking Oblivion deeper into the sparkling sand, so much like gem dust.

He leaps straight up, casting back his hood with one gloved hand, throwing his Oathkeeper around him in a Fira Raid, burning and melting and fusing his blade slices into glass.

The glass is still steaming as he relands on Oblivion.

Namine claps for him, and stares as he throws another Fira Raid at a wall of crystal that she had thought to be part of this world.

Namine gasps for him when he Blizzagas the strange glass lines in the sand, covering them in a barrier of ice.

The crystal barrier cracks a sharp report as the keyblade sinks into it, melting its will away.

He manages - somehow - to pull Oblivion up from beneath his very feet and somersault onto his block of ice, skating off the edge.

Namine claps with delight, gasps with fear, and itches to draw, as Roxas beckons her from her safety place just under a gigantic wall of water, crashing.

Loose, hooded cloak, the Nobody symbol she drew and loved dearly. Brown-blond hair, spiked.

Flicker - Tight, plated armor, the Heartless symbol emblazoned across his chest. Silver hair, long and loose.

"ROXAS!"

She is lucky, she thinks, that Nobodies do not need to breathe. Otherwise, Roxas and she would have long since stopped breathing.

If not from the water, from Roxas' masterpiece.

He looks at her from across the Blizzaga'ed lamination, his mosaic sparkling away from his radiance. His face, harsh with shadows, the waters soft and lapping, shimmering his light away.

Do you like it, Namine, he is mouthing at her.

She cannot speak nor shake her head.

He walks closer, his eyes bluer than the turquoise surrounding them. Holds out his arms.

The first shards of ice begin to break apart and drift away on the pounding currents.

Namine, from the relative safety of the dark portal, steps into them, willingly. As Roxas lets his concentration fade, he lets Namine float just above the sands.

Laughs at her, even if the light radiating from him renders his face cruel. She doesn't flinch, not really.

Lets him put his arms around her and take her to the surface.

Like petals, the floating shards sink again to the bottom.

They are floating together, above the lines in the sand that he drew.

Her art is of pencils on paper, creating by memory the instinct that strides to mind.

His art is of taking what is there and making it better. Shaping it to his want or need. Drawing in the sand. Teasing out the strands of possibility and making them thicker. Stronger. Bolder.

She is seeing, of his mosaic, a blur. The Blizzaga shields far too much of it; his light, diffusing, is weak on the outlines.

She pushes her head near his ear.

The movement of her lips on his earlobe jerks him until he feels what she is saying.

They sink slowly, together; her sandals long since lost, his cloak in danger of drifting away.

"May I see?" she moves against his ear, and he smiles.

The ice bursts, winging upwards like startled doves, the light from Roxas reflecting a thousand views of them two embracing and the picture below through the shards that graze past, harmless.

It is of Roxas, she sees.

Her colouring pencils will not do this justice.

Roxas, kneeling on Oblivion's hilt, tracing lines in sand with Oathkeeper. Lines in the sand of Namine, chewing on a pencil, indecisive of what to draw next.

His face is ethereal when he laughs at her again. She knows he laughs because his body is shaking, his arms reaching out further to burst the light within the colorful jewels.

She watches him in awe, thinks he is even more beautiful as his mosaic rises around them, scattered gemstones floating past, rubies and sapphires and emeralds and twilight gems, flickering firefly, pyrefly, away.

Flicker - she is cuddled into another chest, and he is more translucent, flickers of light fading away from his chest. There is hair hanging just in her sight, red hair

flicker - brown -

and his hair is blond, perhaps only in that light. It would have been brown otherwise, she knows, had he not changed.

Blond-brown-blue. In this light, her dreams are fading.

He lands her straight through a portal, sinking past the glass he fused together.

Lands her dry in her room, where she sprints to get her pencils and paper and spend another week recording what she remembers.

But she will forget, eventually, what stars flew past her and an almost-kiss, the laws of physics be damned; falling head-first with someone that vanishes out of her memories except as another cloaked figure.

But he will not forget. When he disappears, he will not forget.

He watches her for as long as it will take, hood up and like any other Organization member; waits, silent and invisible in a corner until her furious scritching fails again and she chews on her pencil, indecisive.

Then he will appear, as if out of nowhere, and take her willing hand; introduce himself again, Number Thirteen, Roxas.

Take her trusting through a portal, to a beach somewhere in a world out there. Call his blades, call them Oblivion and Oathkeeper, and start drawing, two handed patience.

There must be fifty, by now, fifty dead mosaics flooded and dull, on many, many, dead worlds.

Drawing in the sand.

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End file.
